CalCars and Andy Grove have been proposing a major focus on converting
"PSVs" (large internal combustion engine gas guzzling Pickups, SUVs and
Vans) so they run partially on electricity.http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html
<http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html> Here we address some of
the key non-economic issues in doing so. This analysis starts off pretty
simply, and gets to some important numbers in the summary. If you get
the first half, don't worry if you decide to skip the technical details
in the second half.

Many people agree it's a good idea but are not sure it's practical. They
ask questions including, "Can there be a business case? Is it realistic
to imagine converting millions of vehicles in less than five years? Can
the retrofit infrastructure and component supply chain
(batteries/motors) scale up rapidly enough?" Part of the answer to these
questions involves whether we are operating with the same urgency and
can muster the national will we had in 1943, when we stopped building
cars and trucks to tanks and planes -- and after auto industry leaders
told FDR they couldn't build 30,000 planes in one year, they built
120,000.

Many people also say -- and we fully agree -- that it's important to get
incentives and disincentives right. And we need new advertising
messages, and short-term rental deals, so these large vehicles are
purchased and used by people who really need them -- not by those who
own a big vehicle they use only occasionally to tow a boat, fill with
gear, or go off-road.

When we explain that today's PSVs stay on the road for several decades
(10-15 years in US, another 10-20 when resold internationally) we often
hear the suggestion, from those who see plug-in cars coming within the
next five years, "why not just crush the gas-guzzlers and replace them
with new large efficient PHEVs?"

Many states have "cash for clunkers" programs, but they are limited in
scope. Significant expansion of these programs will have unintended
consequences in distorting the resale market, nationally and
internationally (as thoughtfully discussed at Freakonomics:http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/no-cash-for-clunkers/
<http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/no-cash-for-clunkers/>
.) Of course, we do want carmakers to mass-produce new PHEV PSVs. But
many of the same scaling issues apply: can carmakers build enough of
them fast enough to reduce petroleum use and thereby improve our
prospects on energy security and climate change? That brings us back to
our original idea: quickly start to retrofit the fleet, starting with
many of the 80 million PSVs in the U.S.

Even if it were possible to crush and replace many of these cars, there
is one important underlying question that we haven't been able to answer
until now. We haven't known how much energy it takes to build a car, and
how much you're thereby throwing away when you crush an old car that
operates perfectly well and could be converted into a PHEV PSV.

NOTE: This document does NOT address economic costs and payback -- only
energy and CO2, which are entirely independent of economic incentives
and other policy or business issues!

Summary

If you replace your current large or small internal combustion engine
(ICE) vehicle with a new PHEV of the same size, it will take over 40,000
miles of driving the PHEV in place of the old vehicle to save as much
energy and CO2 emissions as was consumed in the manufacture of the new
vehicle! If instead you convert your existing vehicle into a PHEV, you
will need to drive only 8,600 miles before beginning to save more energy
and CO2 emissions than caused by the conversion process.

This is because it requires as much energy as is contained in 1,822
gallons of gasoline* to manufacture a new mid-sized PHEV PSV (Pickup
truck, SUV, or Van), but only the equivalent of 360 gallons -- 1/5 as
much -- to convert an existing PSV into a PHEV. For a Prius-sized
passenger car, the numbers are 1,035 and 196 gallons respectively.

* burned at 100% efficiency, not the 12-15% efficiency of ordinary ICE
vehicles

If you consider only oil consumption, rather than total energy use and
CO2 emissions, the savings begin significantly sooner. It's almost
immediate for conversions: after 8,000 miles for a new PHEV and only
1,600 miles for a conversion. Here are two hypothetical scenarios
(neither of which we're proposing):

If all 248 million light vehicles on the road in the U.S. today were
crushed and replaced with PHEVs, the manufacture of the new vehicles
would require the energy equivalent of 354 billion gallons of gasoline,
or 2.5 years of the total U.S. consumption of 142 billion gallons/year.

Conversion of all 248 million into PHEVs, however, would require only
the equivalent of half a year's consumption. So, even if done as quickly
as possible, at any time the energy to manufacture conversions will be
far more than offset by the savings produced from the conversions
already on the road. We think these numbers prove that on a societal
basis, converting millions of ICE PSVs is a winning energy-saving
strategy. And though we don't address cost issues in this analysis,
clearly, if we can reduce the costs of conversions with higher volumes,
offset much of the higher first costs by making these conversions
eligible for comparable levels of federal incentives as new PHEVs, and
offer financing options, the economics will work out too.

Details

For three important environmental factors -- energy consumption, oil
consumption, and CO2 emissions -- the question has been raised about how
long it takes for the savings after building a new vehicle or converting
one into a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) to make up for the cost of manufacture
or conversion.

"The Argonne National Lab, a U.S. Department of Energy research center,
has analyzed the material intensity and energy consumption of
manufacturing vehicles and vehicle fuels. Their work is packaged in
GREET models (for greenhouse gases, regulated emissions and energy use
in transportation). According to the models, the average conventional
internal combustion engine vehicle is made up of 61.7 percent steel,
11.1 percent iron, 6.9 percent aluminum, 1.9 percent copper/brass, 2.9
percent glass, and around 13.6 percent plastic/rubber. This information
helps determine the energy required to produce a vehicle.

"The energy required can be measured in British thermal units. A Btu is
the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a pound of water
by one degree Fahrenheit. According to the GREET model, it takes 100.391
million Btus to make the vehicle, batteries and fluids in an average
3,201-pound vehicle. This comes out to 31,362 Btus per pound. The
obvious lesson is that, in general, heavier vehicles require more energy
to make than lighter vehicles.

"It's been said that hybrids are more environmentally damaging than
large SUVs because of the battery production, but this has been widely
disputed. According to GREET, a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) that
weighs 2,632 pounds requires 101.726 million Btus to make, or 38,650
Btus per pound (compared to 31,362 for a conventional vehicle). As we
will see, this small difference in production energy becomes negligible
when you factor in the increased fuel efficiency."

I converted the energy costs from BTU into kWh and made two major
assumptions that were required due to a lack of further information:

* CO2 emissions are roughly proportional to the energy content of
the fuel and the energy expenditure for manufacture. In the absence of
better data, this appears to be a reasonable assumption, as, at 8.9
kg-CO2/gallon and 36.4 kWh/gallon energy content, gasoline combustion
releases 245 g/kWh of energy content (only 12-15% of that energy gets to
the wheels of an ICE vehicle), just over the 2004 California average of
236 g/kWh for grid electricity. Manufacturing typically uses some coal
(high CO2), electricity, oil, and natural gas (low CO2).
* Oil consumption accounts for 25% of the energy used to
manufacture a vehicle. This is an arbitrary number that seems reasonable
given that oil's contribution is mainly twofold: as a raw material for
plastics and for transportation of parts and completed vehicles. If this
assumption is off, it affects only the "...oil consumed..." data in my
spreadsheet.

The table below, extracted from my spreadsheet, shows the projected
miles one must drive in a new or converted vehicle vs. a
higher-consumption vehicle, in order to begin saving more energy or CO2
emissions beyond that caused by the manufacture or conversion of the
vehicle. (The results are, of course, not accurate to 4-5 decimal
places, but the text quotes the exact numbers in the table's cells to
help the reader identify the specific cells.) I looked at two types of
PHEVs:

* FULL EV: capable, like the Chevy Volt, of 40 miles of pure
electric driving before using the ICE. Various studies indicate an
average of 80% electric propulsion for such vehicles.
* BLENDED (shown only for the Prius conversion below): limited to
blended (electric and ICE) operation, and with only 20 miles of
equivalent electric range. I assumed an average of 40% electric
propulsion for such vehicles.

Miles a resulting vehicle must be driven to save enough energy and CO2
emissions to make up for what's used in converting the original or
manufacturing a new vehicle:

ORIGINAL VEHICLE: A PRIUS-SIZED ICE PASSENGER CAR or hybrid
Miles Resulting vehicle
8,617 PHEV conversion from an existing ICE
10,867 PHEV conversion from an existing Prius
44,261 New Prius-sized PHEV (crush the old Prius-sized ICE)

These benefits will accrue starting with the first vehicle built, while
the cost benefits will improve with volume, optimized design and
declining battery costs.

We repeat the conclusion we reached before the "details" section above:
We think these numbers prove that on a societal basis, compared to
crushing old vehicles, converting millions of ICE PSVs is a winning
energy-saving strategy. And though we don't address cost issues in this
analysis, clearly, if we can reduce the costs of conversions with higher
volumes, offset much of the higher first costs by making these
conversions eligible for comparable levels of federal incentives as new
PHEVs, and offer financing options, the economics will work out too.